Triumph in Canada

A few people have received email from CBS admitting that they’ve removed the nonsense.

Dr. Sher has asked me to respond to your recent e-mail regarding our What’s Your Type? new donor recruitment program. I understand that you have also sent an e-mail communicating your concerns to www.whatsyourtype@blood.ca and that others from our organization have provided you with specific details in response. I can confirm that the content you object to has been removed from our web site. The marketing materials for this program are being revised.

Interesting. I would have bet against a bureaucracy being able to admit error.

CBS might have a very different corporate culture, because of their beginnings. It was the blood contamination scandal that brought down their predecessor, the Red Cross. The possibility of Hepatitis and HIV transmission through the blood supply was becoming more and more likely over the years, yet the Red Cross took no action.

Perhaps the people at the CBS actually did learn from the experience of history.

A few years ago, I wrote to Canada Blood Services when I first learned about the blood type nonsense on their website. I complained that it was all a bunch of hooey and they responded with a B.S. email that it was all in fun and then they thanked me for my concern. It was annoying that they didn’t remove it until recently. I’ll have to go and dig up their email and post it.

I’m jealous. Here in the U.S., we still have a problem with the blood-donor screening process being based on who it’s politically convenient to exclude (gay and bisexual men, whether or not we’ve ever had unprotected sex) rather than who’s more likely to be a risk factor (gay, bisexuals, and heterosexuals who have had unprotected sex).

I wrote to them last week, pointing out that the promotion of pseudoscience based on out of date and inaccurate data was not consistent with their stated values and destroyed trust in the service:

Canadian Blood Services Values

Canadian Blood Services is committed to delivering quality blood services to Canadians through a national not-for-profit corporation that:
…
responds quickly to medical, technical, scientific and management advances and innovations

I like to think it had something to do with their change, although their response was an inadequate form letter

Thank you for your feedback regarding our What’s Your Type? program. We appreciate your taking the time to share your opinion with us.

We do make reference to selected aspects of ketsueki-gata within the What’s Your Type program and our intention is for this to be a light-hearted way to involve potential new donors in the typing process.

However, we view it as only a minor part of the process. Once the initial contact with a potential new donor is made, we use the What’s Your Type program to discuss the science of blood typing. This includes explaining in detail the ABO categories of blood types as well as the use of anti-serum during the typing process. Once the participant’s blood type has been determine, we explain the importance of knowing one’s type, as well as the number of people within the Canadian population that have that same type.

The conversation then moves to the idea of donating blood and the reasons why it is an important thing to do. While the typing is done in a mobile environment and not a lab, we find this part of the process is actually a valuable window into the science behind blood and a demonstration that most participants find compelling and informative.

We have found the program to be a successful recruiting tool, particularly with young people. They are often nervous about the typing, and the reference to a potential link between personality and blood type offers them an avenue to share their experience with others in a way that, for many, relieves the tension of the process. All participants, however, are made aware that the link between blood type and personality is not, in any way, scientific.

We are working on some updates to the What’s Your Type program this year with more focus on science based facts while still keeping the program fun for potential blood donors in Canada.

I got the same form letter after my email last week! I replied to it, but I’d also made a phone call and talked to one of their front line phone staffers. She really didn’t seem to know what to say once we’d exhausted the “all in fun” part of the conversation. She took my name and number and to their credit they did phone me back and leave a message and local number to call them. I haven’t gotten to it yet, but I’ll be sure to thank them for doing the right thing.

Meanwhile, we still have to convince them to stop discriminating against potential donors who happen to be gay… Larger and longer battle, that one.

I hope it’s just me,but that sounds an awful lot like the stock “back down from any controversy” reflex coming down on the side of science more or less by coincidence. I can easily see that exact letter going out to, say, somebody who objected that they published an ad showing a gay couple holding hands or something. There’s nothing actually about factual inaccuracy there, just “the content you object to” in “sharing your views with is.”

It’s not just a prohibition on gay men, quidam. It’s a prohibition on anyone who has had sex with a man who has had sex with a man since 1977. It’s nonsense and at this point it’s unjustifiable. If CBS were serious about keeping their donated blood pathogen free, they would have better screening practices instead of archaic and generalised prohibitions that are virtually unenforceable anyhow.

Hmmph. The Red Cross took away my donor card permanently when I told them not to worry about my fainting, as it had happened before. Never did figure out if that was policy or medically sound or just one nurse’s opinion that “my body was trying to tell me something”.

Reading about the topic the first time I was conviced that the ad was tongue in cheek, and had no problem with it.
But I guess it is ok to tell all others that they have no right not to be offended, but when some rather obvious writing ridiculing pseudoscience is published that by the hordes here is misunderstood as advocating pseudoscience said hordes lash out in being mightily offended.

I think the term stuffed shirts describe the hordes here and a certain usually likeable professor quite well.

People who spent more than 3 months in the UK after 1980 are banned from giving blood too. That includes me.

It’s just as well that the UK doesn’t apply that rule, then, otherwise we’d be in a spot of bother… I seem to recall that the only trouble we’ve had here recently was a dodgy batch of US-sourced blood.

Ok, the campaign didn’t try the factual approach. They were tring to be cute and interesting to attract people to their good cause. For any kind of marketing today, this shouldn’t be surprising. I get that you wrote a righteous letter and they backed down. There’re a lot of these letters being written these days (many in religious wroth) so the outcome probably wasn’t all that surprising to you. But a triumph? Really? Please.

Greensage, I agree with you that it’s not a triumph, exactly. That’s exaggeration. As for the rest of your comment, your concern is noted. By the way, it may help you to actually learn something about the position of those of us who do have a problem with superstition in marketing (hint: we don’t think marketing is a good excuse to employ superstition).

But I guess it is ok to tell all others that they have no right not to be offended, but when some rather obvious writing ridiculing pseudoscience is published that by the hordes here is misunderstood as advocating pseudoscience said hordes lash out in being mightily offended.

Are you claiming the CBS was actually ridiculing the pseudoscience of ketsueki-gata and that we were too obtuse to realize that?

I found nothing on the CBS website nor in their response that suggested that the CBS was in any way critical of ketsueki-gata, or that their incorrect evolutionary history of blood types was not intended to be taken seriously.

It’s not an issue of being offended, rather one of trust

The issue of trust is important with the Canadian Blood Services, given the history of incompetence and misconduct in the Red Cross that led to the formation of the CBS in the first place (Google ‘Canada tainted blood scandal’)

Promoting pseudoscience and facts that are plain wrong and have been known to be wrong for two decades, destroys trust. If the science presented on their website is wrong, how can we trust the science in their laboratories?

Are they preserving blood by placing it under amethyst crystal pyramids? Am I going to get a homeopathic blood transfusion? Is my profession going to be used to determine my blood type?

As an apparently toxic Brit I was wondering if anyone could dig out the ‘reasoning’ behind the 3 months since 1980 exclusion. Perhaps the US carried out some experiment on us that we should really know about.
It sounds like it could be BSE but it would be nice to know so we can all have a laugh about it.

I think PZ is seriously overreacting to this one. It was a light-hearted marketing campaign. It said right on the main page that it was for entertainment purposes only. It was never intended to be treated as ‘scientific’. PZ, you need to grow a sense of humour.

I couldn’t be bothered getting behind this one. We have more pressing things to worry about in Canada this week. Like how are we going to survive the next four years with a right-wing government led by an evangelical christian who may or may not believe that global warming is real (let’s not even discuss evolution), after our champion of sanity and social and environmental responsibility has died. It’s a little weightier than CBS and their pseudoscience and stupid policies.

I e-mailed them myself. I figured a lot of people would, but as someone who used to regularly volunteer at blood drives, and who was a regular donor, seeing such ridiculous woo-woo being promoted on a blood donor website made me want to gag, so I had to chime in.

Outstanding! Now maybe they can work on reviewing their absurd blood donation policies. Constantly crying out for people to donate and unilaterally ignoring people willing to give because of sexual orientation. Insanity.

Yawn. Complainers, just because there are bigger things, doesn’t mean smaller things should be put off. There are a lot of people out there. How about, instead of complaining here, on an American’s blog with an international readership and commentariat, go do something about that bigger issue?

Frankly, a few words an a couple hundred letters weren’t that hard to write. It was easy to get CBS to capitulate. It took almost no effort and almost no time. How about a letter writing campaign to Harper asking him to clarify his stances on global warming and evolution? Shouldn’t be too hard. Or is it easier to complain?

Re: the ban on blood donation based on living in the UK >3 mos since 1980 – apparently this one has changed and it is now a six year span, rather than all of 1980 onward. I thought I was ineligible, but nope. Don’t ask me which six years.

I do think it quite insane that living in Africa, no big deal. Lots of (hetero)sex partners, no problemo. Tattooed and pierced, pshaw.

But you’re a guy who had a one night stand in 1992 with another guy? Ooooh, contamination.

Please let me know if you’re looking for a writer for your site. You have some really good posts and I think I would be a good asset. If you ever want to take some of the load off, I’d really like to write some articles for your blog in exchange for a link back to mine. Please blast me an email if interested. Regards!